Barnstorming through Europe with Jim and George!

I have been a little hit and miss on the blog and will likely always be so... only so many hours in the day. At any rate, I am back in Europe again this week, UK and Denmark. I visited some customers in the UK on Monday and then conducted business reviews with my sales team and distributor in London on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday I was in Denmark seeing customers and heading home today (Friday)! Because I had to be in London early Monday morning I flew in on Sunday. I had some time when I arrived on Sunday afternoon and visited Windsor castle, weekend residence of the queen. I have not been there in probably close to 15 years so it was nice to go back. The castle is great and is the oldest continually inhabited castle in the world, and yes, the Queen was in residence although we did not have tea together. I was able to get a quick tour of the castle in... it's pretty big so I skipped the royal doll room! As usual, I have some challenges follwing the rules and was reprimanded for taking photos of the portrait of Angela's great, x,x,x,x, Grandfather, the Duke of Wellington in the Waterloo room. No worries, if you just go around to another room and then duck back under the ropes quickly you can still take a picture without being seen :-) I also wanted to see St. George's Cathedral which is on the castle grounds but it was closed on Sunday unless you attended a service... therefore, insta-catholic! Seriously, I decided that since I was unable to go to our church it was best to at least have some kind of worship so I attened the evening mass or "Evensong". It was a memorable event filled with pageantry and tradition, although I am not thinking of changing teams I am glad I attended. You were also not supposed to take pictures in the chapel but I found that if you crossed your leg and surreptitiously held the camera under your knee you can get a few good shots. Angela swears this was punishment but later my telephone (incl. camera) froze and I had to reset it thereby losing all of my ill gotten photos - serves me right!

Angela and Brock asked me to also take a few photos with his curious George so I did! I suspect that this may be an ongoing tradition. Below are a few photos of him.

George on his 1st Ferrari George on a mailbox in Denmark

On Thursday evening I had a wonderful visit with our friends and former neighbors Michael, Helle and Cornelius Hasselris at their beautiful estate in Birkerod, Denmark (approx 20 miles outside of Copenhagen). This was a last minute addition to the agenda as I had some time that evening and they were fortunately home and invited me to visit them. They have a beautiful estate on 25 hectares with thousands of trees, 38 horses and several lovely ponds. In fact, they also have deer on the property and shot one the previous evening which we enjoyed for dinner! The visit was a highlight for me and I was very glad that we were able to get together. Both Michael and Helle work for IBM and were formerly on assignment to the US where they resided across the street from us. It was fantastic reuniting with them again and enjoying a wonderful meal together on one of their patios... it is a world away from Mead! The days in Scandanavia are quite long and the conversation was good so before we were aware it was already 10:30pm. Some photos below... of course, with George.

Michael and Helle - thanks a ton it was great to see you!

One of their ponds viewed from the patio yet another pond!

It turns out Michael is a fantastic carpenter (I had no idea) He built a fort for Cornelius which is far too large to capture in this photo but very cool nonetheless - way to go Michael!

One last anecdote and then it is time to get on the plane... I took the train back from Michael and Helle's to the airport Hitlon where I was staying. Needless to say, it was very late and I was very tired after a long week. I fell asleep on the train - Uh Oh! I was fighting to keep my eyes open and finally succumed. Needless to say, I missed my stop but only by one station. However, that particular staion was an important one since it was some distance from the previous one... when I woke up I was in Sweden, just in time for meatballs and lingonberries! Not a great situation to be in when it is 12:30 in the morning and you have no Swedish currency but I perservered and eventually got back to the hotel OK - a little chagrined but definitely wide awake!

Lest we forget - A Dad's take on Disneyland!

Angela posted earlier on the drama at the conclusion of our Disneyland trip and that was indeed a big deal and NO FUN for anyone - especially Brock and Erika although it was taxing on the whole crew.
I know we have a reputation for misfortunes and accident's - could probably write a book about it! So, to counteract the reputation I wanted to remind us all of why we went to the magic Kingdom in the first place.

Brynne is part of the middle school chorale group and they were singing in a chorale contest at Disneyland. The kids performed great and although they did not do as well as they had hoped for in the contest they represented themselves, their families and the school very well.

On the way down we had a nice visit with my parents for a couple of days in St. George (We really enjoyed it - so much so that we decided to come back for an extended stay on the way home!)

Disneyland really WAS great and we also had a nice time at the beach and other places on Saturday although it was a little cold. It was great seeing my brother Tim and his family as well. It was also fantastic to have Mom and Dad drive down from St. George to see Brynne perform and join us for a few days. We spent the day with them on Sunday and went to their church and they also came out to Disneyland with us twice and showed us a few "locals only" secrets!

I was so proud of the kids, they were generally well behaved and we really had a great time. Lily was so brave and rode virtually all of the rides. I think there were only three that she could not ride but she hit some of the classics like Space Mountain, Matterhorn and the Haunted Mansion! The older girls got to spend some time with their cousins and also ride some rides by themselves. We learned to leverage the magic of fastpasses and parent passes to get maximum ride time on the rides like California Screamin' and Indiana Jones.

And, of course, after the drama in St. George on the way home we were really blessed with an easy and uncomplicated drive home. It was good by any one's standards which made it absolutely awesome by ours!

So... all in all even though it was not exactly the trip we planned it was a good one and certainly one that we will ALWAYS remember, which at the end of the days is really what it is all about - right?